Athletes and other persons involved in various athletic activities frequently perform certain exercises designed and selected to strengthen various muscles of the body. There are several basic classes of such exercises, including but not limited to push-ups and planks. Push-ups are generally used to strengthen the core muscles, which can include the abdominals, back muscles and pelvic muscles.
One disadvantage of existing techniques for performing push-ups is that push-ups do not put enough strain on many of the muscles of interest, especially if the person performing the push-ups is fit or very fit, and accordingly, he or she has to repeat the exercises numerous times in order for push-ups to be effective. Also, some of the core muscles may not receive a sufficient workout during standard push-ups. Moreover, push-ups are not considered to be isometric exercises.
Planks are somewhat related to push-ups in that they can be started from similar positions. However, a person doing a plank mostly takes a preselected position and tries to hold it as long as possible. It has been found that this exercise strengthens various muscles very effectively without too much strain.
Thus, there remains a need for providing methods and apparatuses for enabling push-ups to be more effective, as well as a need for rendering planks even more effective and for performing isometric exercises.